


In The Semblance Of Man

by aisydays



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood, Canon Typicial Elias being a twat, Gen, Mild Gore, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 00:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20300203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aisydays/pseuds/aisydays
Summary: In another universe, Danny Stoker wasn't just taken by the Stranger. In another universe, Tim Stoker didn't leave the Opera House unharmed.Elias finds this fascinating.





	In The Semblance Of Man

**Author's Note:**

> This comes from an AU that myself and Mick (@Mickolas on Ao3) have been developing for a While. Hopefully there will be more of it, exploring all the other TMA characters, so watch this space!
> 
> Title is taken from "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, because I'm just that Extra. And also doing an English degree.

When Timothy Stoker was turned into a vampire, the irony was not lost on him.

His whole life had been shaped by horror, after all. Names of Gothic authors were more familiar to him than some of the people he’d gone to primary school with. Ever since they were kids, his brother had been obsessed with all those old Gothic stories. Tim vividly remembered sitting on the sofa watching the old Boris Karloff  _ 'Frankenstein' _ through his fingers, far too young, while Danny sat transfixed, eyes wide with excitement. Even as he got older, and cycled through interests at the same rate Tim started going through partners, Danny still kept all his posters, his fancy copies of everything from Poe’s short stories to Mary Shelley’s  _ Frankenstein _ – Tim eventually lost count of the amount of conversations he’d had about how fascinating the publication history was, all the changes made in the different versions. Later, when he joined the Institute, the fact that it was founded in 1818 felt like a cruel joke.

_ Dracula _ wasn’t exactly one of Danny’s favourites, beyond the novelty of the shared surname, but it was the one that stuck with Tim the most, well into adulthood. He had nightmares for weeks after watching the old Hammer Horror film, visions of Christopher Lee’s bloody grin haunting his dreams. Not of course that he admitted it to anyone – that would have run the risk of the babysitter who’d let them watch it being fired, and Tim knew how much Danny loved curling up in front of the telly and watching movies a seven year old really should not have been allowed to watch. While he was perfectly content to take it all in, scared in the moment but sleeping peacefully afterwards, it was Tim who was the one waking up in the middle of the night convinced the dressing gown on the back of his door was going to come alive and bite him.

Yet despite all that, stories of vampires and ghouls were the last things on Tim’s mind the night Danny was attacked. He was more preoccupied with his brother’s unnatural behaviour, his return at about 5 o’clock in the morning from his expedition, the glassy unnatural sheen to his eyes. That one word, mumbled through lips so pale they were almost indistinguishable from the rest of his face, a garbled sound that might have been “Joey”. Tim almost didn’t want to leave him that night, curled up asleep on the sofa, looking so painfully small underneath all the blankets. The logical part of Tim was sure this could be settled in the morning, that Danny just needed some rest and some very strong sugary tea when he woke up. After all, this was  _ Danny _ . The kid who’d faced almost every hardship with a smile on his face, who’d breezed through life bouncing back from any set-back along his path. 

Never mind the small part of Tim whispering in the back of his mind that his brother had never been this bad before. The part that noticed the small scratches hiding underneath his collar, staining the neck of his t-shirt with specks of blood.

The part that felt darkly vindicated the next morning when Danny had vanished.

He frantically searched through his (admittedly tiny) flat, checking out of windows for any sign of him, rifling through every piece of paper on every surface to see if he could find a note, an explanation, anything to even give a hint as to where his brother had gone. But all he could find were a collection of drawings. The clown, with its shock of black hair and smiling lips. The sharp points of its bloodstained teeth, glinting in the sunlight streaming into Tim’s apartment.

Looking back, the options Tim could have taken were clear. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that. But there seemed to be some otherworldly force driving his actions that day. It could have been fate, it could have been some kind of karma. Hell, Tim was willing to believe it could have been bloody Elias, pulling at strings from within his damn Institute, planning the perfect way to get a vampire into his clutches. Or maybe Tim was just finding excuses. Ways he could have changed things, done things better. Trying to ignore the fact that there was a strong chance it was his fault his brother was gone.

Then again, it was pretty clear when he arrived at that ghoulish theatre, hidden deep in the bowels of the Opera House, that there was no saving Danny. His brother was there alright, on a chair in the centre of the stage, still as a statue. The waxy texture of his skin could have almost allowed him to pass for a waxwork, if it wasn’t for the wound.

It looked like his throat had been ripped clean open, blood and viscera covering everywhere from his chin to his chest. If Tim had looked close enough he’d have probably been able to see the white glint of bone among the mess that was left behind. The stage was covered in Danny’s blood, long smears of it across the walls and floor in such precise strokes that it looked less like the result of a frightened struggle and more like a gruesome attempt at artwork. Either that, or whatever killed his brother was marking its territory, like some kind of predator. And Tim had never felt more like prey.

He was frozen to the spot, staring almost numbly at the horrific scene in front of him. It was all he could do, even as the figures started appearing in the shadows, nothing more than glinting teeth and flashing eyes at first as their forms remained horrifyingly indistinct in the gloom. Tim knew without being told that these were the monsters responsible for the wreck that had once been his brother, that they had been the ones to lure him down to this stone mockery of a theatre and tear his throat out with those glistening fangs. It wasn’t until the clown stepped out, however, that he understood the full scope of the situation.

It was dressed up in a fairly vintage costume, like something you’d see on a creepy porcelain doll at the back of a charity shop, or in one of those haunted house mazes he’d been dragged through by several partners over the years. The suit hung off its frame, fabric billowing out around the limbs and torso before being pulled in at the wrists and ankles. The design made its movements seem unnatural, as if it wasn’t quite clear where it was moving, only that it was unsettlingly smooth. The clown walked in that awful manner into the centre of the stage, right over to where Danny’s corpse was slumped on the chair, caressing his face with one white gloved hand. If Tim could have, he would have vomited right there onto the floor, but he was still stuck in his place. Enthralled, some might say, with none of the positive connotations that word brought. It kept him in place as the clown turned its horrible face to stare straight at him, jet black eyes staring right into Tim’s eyes, ivory fangs gleaming in the black void of its smile. In that moment, staring at the sickly white of the clown’s face and ruff contrasting so starkly with the bright red paint – at least, Tim hoped to God it was paint – all he could think about was that god-awful Dracula film Danny had dragged him to when they were teenagers, the one where they dressed Lucy up in that hideous harlequin-esque outfit. It had freaked Tim out even then, and now, when flashes of it were appearing in his mind, the comparison made him sick to his stomach.

The clown-vampire- _ thing _ continued to stroke its hand against Danny’s skin but when it spoke, its words were clearly addressed to Tim. “You should not have come here” it hissed, voice at once both snakelike and coarse, and yet somehow overlaid with words that sounded crooned in an almost loving voice. The sweet tones curled around Tim’s mind, infecting his thoughts and spreading through him like a gas. He found himself slowly stepping forward, feet moving one in front of the other. It was hard to tell if he was being controlled or if he was genuinely drawn towards the voice, his thoughts were so muddled and cloudy that the impulse to move closer seemed like the only rational thought he had left. As he moved closer to the stage, the creatures in the shadows moved closer too, slowly revealing themselves as the soft glow of the stage lights hit them.

They could have passed as human, if you were in enough of a hurry and weren’t paying enough attention to your surroundings. They still stood upright, if slightly stooped, and for all intents and purposes had all the right limbs and features. It was only when you stopped to really look that their true nature began to reveal itself. Their eyes looked normal enough but in the dim light they had an inhuman sheen to them, like an animal caught in a beam of light. Their teeth were just long and sharp enough to register as Wrong in Tim’s mind, even if they hadn’t been covered in blood. Their skin was just as ashen pale as the clown’s, but these things had stark blue veins standing out against their features, some more obvious than others. Tim began to tremble even as he walked closer, the absolute terror at the thought of facing against these creatures almost strong enough to overwhelm the compulsion to move ever forward.

He reached the stage, climbing up the roughly hewn steps. The clown moved away from Danny to stand in front of him, still staring into his eyes with those pitch dark pools that filled its sockets. It was clear from the cautious distance the other monsters were keeping even as they drew closer that this was their leader, that this thing, whatever it was, was in charge. Tim wasn’t sure if that was terrifying or bizarrely reassuring, that there was something holding all these things back. There was something about the clown’s hideous smile and bared teeth that seemed to suggest that it wasn’t exactly looking to protect him. It felt more like a cat playing with a mouse before it inevitably pounced.

“You should not have come here” it repeated, and this time Tim realised that, as it spoke, although the words were ringing in his ears with that horrible two-toned voice, the clown’s red painted lips did not move from their grimace. “You don’t know what you are facing”

Tim couldn’t respond. Whether it was from terror or whatever power the vampire had over him, he wasn’t entirely sure, but his jaw was locked in place, throat closed up. All that leaked out was a small whimper as the clown reached up and stroked his face with the same gloved hand that had been caressing Danny. Tim could feel it smearing his brother’s blood along the side of his face, and his skin crawled with disgust. The clown cocked its head in a perverse show of interest, black eyes glinting.

In the space of what could have only been seconds, it all went to hell.

The clown lunged for Tim’s throat, fangs suddenly inches long and sharper than they’d been before. They pierced the flesh of Tim’s neck, a sharp pain bursting through him like the first stroke of a tattoo artist’s pen. But even through the haze of pain and fear, something primal in Tim’s mind snapped. Almost on reflex he kicked out with enough strength to rip the monster from his neck, sending it staggering backwards.

Instantly he felt arms and hands grabbing at him as the hoard of monsters swarmed him. He fought with all he could, striking out wildly with his limbs, praying they would connect with something, anything. At one point, when what was presumably an arm was shoved in the direction of his face, all he could do was lash out with his mouth, biting into the flesh in front of him. Hot blood poured into his mouth from the wound, filling his mouth until he had no choice but to choke it down. Tim didn’t think he’d bitten down that hard; in the moment he assumed it was just the adrenaline coursing through him making his bite more power. Later, however, he would learn first-hand the fragility of feral vampires. When it would all be too late.

In the midst of all the chaos, all the limbs flying and the bruising punches and the sheer unbridled terror, it was all just too overwhelming. The last thing Tim saw as his vision blurred and swam, beyond the mass of pale flesh and bright blood, was the clown, cackling laughter ringing in his ears despite how still its face remained.

Tim came to on the corner of the street in front of the Opera House. Around him crowds of tourists and Londoners hurried past, heading towards matinees or dinner reservations or wherever else they were heading to. Either the presence of a shell-shocked man in ragged clothing covered in his own blood was still not surprising enough to break through the carefully constructed apathy inherent to all city dwellers, or there was some force keeping them away, making their eyes slide carefully from the poster advertising that evening’s performance of Don Giovanni to the glittering front of the Theatre Royal decked out in sequins and sparkling lights to try and draw in tourists to come and see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

As Tim made his way home, stumbling through the streets in a daze, it all seemed like an awful, awful dream. Even when he awoke days to his entire body screaming in pain, when the panic didn’t make his heart beat faster because it wasn’t beating at all, when his parents called him to ask if he’d seen Danny because he’d missed coming for dinner and that wasn’t like him at all, nothing seemed  _ real _ . Not until a glance in the mirror showed the pale, sharp toothed creature staring back.

\---------

Vampirism, as Tim discovered fairly quickly, was not all the books said it would be.

This was partly due to the sheer amount of conflicting information in said books. The weeks after the… event had been spent in a haze of both research, ranging from awful romance novels to incredibly dry academic essays written by people who were clearly writing for the most niche audience possible, and the hunger. The insatiable hunger. It started clawing at his stomach a couple of days in, quickly developing from a mild annoyance to an all-consuming  _ need _ , fogging up his thoughts until he could barely think of anything else.

This presented a problem that became evident as soon as Tim tried to eat. The problem being that anything he managed to get down immediately came back up again. With a vengeance. It would have been easy enough to pass it off as just an undiscovered allergy, a sudden intolerance for some preservative or mundane ingredient that just happened to find its way into everything he ate. For the first couple of days he even assumed it was just plain old-fashioned food poisoning. But food poisoning didn’t make your skin grow colder and colder with every passing day. Allergies couldn’t be blamed for the way his vision grew sharper, more defined, until he could see every pore of the face of the people on his tv screen, every pixel forming as the images shifted and changed. And neither could explain the constant humming compulsion to hunt, to chase down and rip and  _ tear _ at skin and muscle and veins, to taste the coppery tang that filled his mouth when he bit down at the cut on his lip, or sucked the blood that welled up in scratches that healed within minutes of being made.

He put off leaving the flat the whole time. At first, he still made contact with the delivery people who dropped off groceries or takeaways, but there were only so many times he could throw perfectly good food in the bin before he gave in and cancelled all his orders, threw the menus for the local Chinese and Indian in the recycling, and stopped answering the door altogether.

The temptation to feast on the delivery person themselves was also a contributing factor.

As it turned out, the hunger could be… subdued somewhat with raw meat, still dripping with blood as Tim lifted it from the package. Even if the flesh of the meat met the same fate as anything else he’d attempted to eat, the meagre amount of blood they provided was enough to take the edge off, apparently the vampire equivalent of a packet of crisps. They were enough to keep him sane, keep his thoughts from wandering too heavily towards violence and bloodshed. He wasn’t satisfied, but he wasn’t feral. More importantly, his thoughts were clear enough to plan his next move.

The blood problem was the most pressing issue and yet, somehow, the easiest to solve. Tim’s flat was a thankfully short walk from a butcher who was concerningly fine with selling copious amounts of blood to a shifty looking stranger who ran out of excuses two trips in. It meant his fridge looked a little too much like a serial killer’s but it wasn’t exactly like anyone would be seeing it. One of the only plus sides to losing his brother – even if everyone else just believed Danny to be missing, and Tim wasn’t exactly about to tell the police about the vampire attack – was people seemed pretty happy to give him some space. Work hadn’t even put up too much of a fuss when he’d resigned over the phone, offering both condolences and a pretty nice severance package. In a matter of days Tim’s social circle had shrunk from a rather impressive amount of people to the few delivery men he still allowed to come to the house, and of course the butcher.

It wasn’t so much that he physically couldn’t leave the house – as it turned out, sunlight wasn’t nearly the threat most books seemed to make it out to be, and the only adverse effects it seemed to have were a dulling of his enhanced senses and the need to wear at least factor 15 sun cream even on a cloudy day. The main obstacle was the constant fear of being discovered. Although his reflection surprisingly did show up in windows and most mirrors, Tim still flinched from the sight of it whenever it caught his eye. It wasn’t a drastic change, nothing nearly as monstrous as the things from the theatre, or that damn clown, but Tim knew. He could see the way his eyes had lost some of their colour, as if hidden behind a very slight film, could notice the sharp points of his canines that hadn’t been nearly as prominent before. His skin wasn’t exactly pale as the driven snow, but there was a pallor to it that hadn’t been there before, as if it was the middle of winter rather than a surprisingly warm and sunny August. It wasn’t anything fake tan couldn’t fix, but it still felt wrong, another reminder of the changes that had taken place, of the monster he was becoming.

Another step away from humanity.

Tim knew, of course, that his weekly trips to the butcher were the only thing standing between him and a massacre. He had felt it in those first few days when the hunger was clawing at his mind and eroding away at his restraint like water dripping on rock. He felt it whenever he went slightly too long without feeding, when he was so repulsed by what he’d become that the thought of having to survive on animal blood made him more sick than hungry. In those cases, he usually lasted about three days before he was forced to cave, before the gnawing pains became too much and people started looking like prey.

Unfortunately, the blood that Tim needed to keep him sane cost money, as did the sun cream, and the new pairs of sunglasses that protected his eyes from the sun’s glare when it seemed to burn brighter than it had before. His savings only stretched so far, and the thought of calling his parents to ask for money was the last thing he wanted – a strange mix of pride and guilt holding him back from even selecting their contact in his phone. He hadn’t really spoken to them since Danny’s disappearance, outside of hushed conversations in police station that were full of lies that burned Tim’s throat as they came out. He couldn’t go to them for help, not when he knew he was partly responsible for what happened to their golden boy, their perfect son, and he couldn’t get by on his own anymore, hiding out in his room and counting every penny, praying he’d have enough money for rent because he couldn’t bear the thought of moving, not in this state.

It took a few days of frantic Googling before he came across the Magnus Institute. Or rather, until he came across the listings of jobs at the Magnus Institute. Their name had cropped up a few times in his investigations, whether being cited in an academic essay or mentioned in the comments of a forum post, urging the original poster to share their story with the researchers there, to let them try and make some sense of it. Tim had even been tempted to make a visit himself, to confess to them what had happened to his brother, lay out his story for their tapes and notebooks. But that ran the risk of admitting what had happened to  _ him _ , the chance that he’d get locked up, just another specimen for them to poke and prod. But, if he could go in as a researcher, use his fancy first in Anthropology from Cambridge to get him through the door…

There had to be something in their databases, their apparently endless libraries and rooms 

of storage. He still had Danny’s notes, his brother’s vague scribblings about the history of the place and some bloke named Smirke. It wasn’t much to go off, but it was still  _ something _ . The first step towards finding whoever killed his little brother, turned Tim into… whatever the fuck he was now. The initial shock and horror at his transformation was beginning to crystallise into a cold anger, a vengeance burning in his  core . This job would kill two birds with one stone, funding his new lifestyle while also satiating the part of him that screamed for vengeance. The part that, when he woke up from nightmares with images of Danny’s mutilated corpse flashing behind his eyes, fed on the guilt and loss and pain and converted it to something coiled and vicious in his gut. This was his opportunity to do something, anything, to soothe the beast inside him… or fuel it even further.

It was almost too easy, getting the job. The tube ride over to the Institute, however, that had been absolute hell. Anxiety swirled in Tim’s chest, threatening to break through the easy-going façade he usually wore. Out of the direct sunlight, his senses were heightened, and he could smell every other passenger crammed into the car with him, their perfume and cologne and sweat mixing together in the air. He’d eaten before he left the house, made damn sure of it, and yet the pulsing of heartbeats formed a white noise in the back of his mind, only drowned out with music played at full volume from his iPod. Every little noise and movement added to the overwhelming mess of sensations pressing at his mind, and the relief he felt when he stepped out of the station and into the fresh air was the sweetest thing he’d felt in weeks.

The Institute itself was a fairly imposing building - clearly built in the Regency period, his newly developed knowledge of architecture helpfully informed him. It didn’t necessarily stand out from the buildings around it, they all seemed to be built around the same time and in similar styles, but there was a certain air around the building that set it apart. It could have just been Tim’s anxious mind talking, but the feeling remained even as he entered, told the receptionist why he’d come, flirting ever so slightly as he did, as old habits reared their heads. Besides, if he did get the job, it never hurt to get on the receptionist’s good side. Years of working in various offices and publishing companies had taught him that.

He was interviewed by the head of the Institute which, he had to admit, felt a little… strange. Usually it was some slightly harassed looking HR director with a thick pile of CVs in front of them, scribbling notes distractedly throughout the interview. Elias Bouchard was  _ very _ different. His neatly pressed suit and slicked back hair made that immediately clear, as did his almost too bright smile as he greeted Tim, handshake lingering just a second too long. It wasn’t enough to put Tim off entirely, he had enough riding on this job as it was, but it was enough to put him on edge slightly throughout the whole experience. That, and the fact that the whole time he was talking, Mr Bouchard never broke eye contact, save for the occasional blink. The dark pools of his eyes seemed to drown Tim as he spoke, glinting in the bright lights of his office.

Despite all that, Mr Bouchard always seemed genuinely interested in what Tim had to say. His gaze was never patronising or even that intense, just a mild and friendly almost half-smile as Tim reeled off that last time he used initiative in the workplace (he’d been using the same answer since sixth form, with only minor tweaks, but it had worked so far, and if it ain’t broke) It felt… almost nice, having the other man listen to him, like he’d finally found someone who really appreciated what he said, and was carefully considering every point in turn. Hell, if it hadn’t been for the intensity of it all, Tim probably would have said he enjoyed it. As it was, he left his interview feeling equal parts flattered, confused, and deeply uneasy.

Still, he got the call a week later confirming he’d been accepted, and welcoming him into the research division of the Magnus Archives. And so he packed up his things, downed a pint of blood, and set off, into the belly of that 100 and something year old beast.

While it was difficult later to say for sure where things went irreversibly wrong in Tim Stoker’s life, that day certainly was one of the contenders.

\----------

The first few months at the Institute passed fairly uneventfully. Sure it was weird, spending his days reading through accounts of the supernatural and chasing down people who’d reported being attacked by ghost spiders or whatever fresh horrors had been reported that week. But the people he worked with were all fairly chill, willing to laugh at some of the more outrageous stuff that came through. It felt odd, making fun of these accounts with what he’d experienced – hell, what he was currently living through - but there was some weird catharsis that came from joking with Anna from the desk next to him about the lady who thought her cat had been stolen and replaced with an imposter who didn’t like the same brand of cat food.

Tim almost started to feel normal again. Sure he had to find excuses to skip going out for lunch with the others, and face the horror that was Martin Blackwood from Research’s disappointed puppy dog eyes, and it was a tad awkward slipping out to down a pint of blood from a refrigerated flask, but overall, things were starting to look up. It was incredible how much human contact was helping him. Tim always knew he was an extrovert, had thrived in the company of others, but spending almost a year alone before entering a job that forced him to interact with people really threw it into sharp relief. Having other people around, being able to chat and laugh and just be a  _ person _ for the first time in however long took a weight off Tim’s shoulders that he hadn’t realised was there.

The work itself wasn’t too bad either. Obviously Tim had no experience in researching the paranormal, but it was interesting to see how much of it was stuff he was already familiar with. Sweet-talking police officers to get at records was strikingly similar to the kind of schmoozing and networking Tim used to do at parties and conferences, and reading through dusty tomes dragged out from the Archive’s library took him back to cramming in the library during his undergrad days. He even seemed to be doing a fairly good job at it, well enough that when Mr Bouchard called him over to his office, he was ready to receive a commendation, rather than a condemnation. 

The man himself seemed to be just as cheerful as ever, shaking Tim’s hand warmly and inviting him to take a seat. Nothing really seemed amiss or out of place, and Tim even found himself relaxing slightly into the surprisingly comfy chair.

That is, until Elias spoke.

“So, Tim, do you know why I called you for this meeting”

Tim shrugged. “No clue boss. I’m rather hoping you’re about to give me a promotion, if I’m honest”

He’d always found slightly sarcastic confidence to be the best way to deal with bosses. Joke about what you’re actually hoping for, and, best case scenario, your boss is so impressed with your cheek you actually get what you want. And if it doesn’t go down well, laugh it off and pretend it was a joke all along. However, Tim had never seen anyone react like Elias did. Usually all he got was a chuckle or two before moving on, but the laugh his boss gave was far too… self-satisfied. It felt like Elias was making his own joke, laughing at something Tim was three steps behind and too slow to get. It set him on edge, the feeling that there was something going on he didn’t know. All the ease he’d built up was slowly draining from him, even as he kept the light smile on his face.

Elias paused in his laughter and settled back into his usual, mildly pleasant smile, but with 

something gleaming behind his eyes. Something that only served to further set Tim on edge.

“You know, I was rather pleased when you came to work here Mr Stoker.” He said, putting ever so slightly too much emphasis on Tim’s last name. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you before”

“Really, sir?” Tim asked, hesitation creeping into his voice despite his best efforts.

Elias nodded. “Yes. You see, I’ve known for some time now the difference between the statements we get that are full of nonsense and those that have… more than a grain of truth in them. Of course the false rather do outweigh the true, but after working here for as long as I have, you start to develop a keen eye for the ones that actually count. What makes my job rather easier, however, is that there seem to be certain… patterns that come up. Similar themes, familiar faces. I don’t suppose you could guess what one of these might be?”

Although Tim’s freaky new vampire body didn’t seem to need to sweat anymore, he knew that if it could, there would be a fine sheen of it covering his forehead. For once in his life he thanked whatever weird biology he currently had that wasn’t showing his growing terror, that his heartbeat wasn’t drumming in his chest like an overenthusiastic marching band, nor his blood draining from his face.

“I… wouldn’t know, sir” he muttered, hoping beyond all hope that this was just a really weird way of Elias giving him a new research project, or that his new boss just really like talking through his work to unsuspecting employees like coders ranting to rubber ducks. That being said, he was pretty sure rubber ducks didn’t have to put up with such ferociously hungry stares, or the overwhelming worry that their secrets would be found out any second. He also doubted rubber ducks had secrets, but that was another matter altogether.

Elias’ smile seemed to grow unnaturally wider, yet at the same time never quite meeting his eyes. It was the smile of a predator, cold and harsh and  _ hungry _ , although Tim had no idea what he hungered for.

“One of the patterns I’m particularly interested in seems to concern… a certain creature that you might be more familiar with from the worlds of horror stories or folklore.” Elias paused dramatically, seemingly savouring Tim’s discomfort like a fine wine. “What do you know about vampires?”

If Tim hadn’t already been panicked, the words that dripped from Elias’ lips would have pushed him fully over the edge. Part of him wanted to just deny everything, pretend that any interest he had in vampires was just as academic as anyone else in the Institute, like Jake from the floor above and his so-ironic-it's-sincere obsession with Bigfoot. Or Martin and his bloody spider facts he would spout whenever one of the spindly bastards came within hitting distance of Tim and a rolled-up file. He could just lie, pretend the piles of books he was taking out from the library were just for light reading, or that the way he immediately volunteered to research for statements that seemed even remotely linked to clowns or vampires or even Robert Smirke was just enthusiasm for his job, a way to establish himself as a hardworking addition to his new job.

Something about the cold amusement in Elias’ eyes seemed to indicate that this would not in fact be the case. It felt like Tim was being stripped bare before him, all his secrets written out on his face as clear as the statements he spent his time poring over. A deeper part of him knew without being told that Elias knew everything, that there was no point in hiding anything anymore. Judging by the glint that had appeared in the other man’s eyes, it was clear his boss knew this too. Elias stalked around the room, walking with slow, purposeful steps and he circled the chair Tim was sat on.

“We’ll drop the pretence shall we Mr Stoker” he said, leaning down so he was speaking almost directly in Tim’s ear. Even though he was standing behind the chair, Tim could imagine the cruelly interested smile that was dancing across his boss’ face. His voice was still low, now almost purring in contentment. “I know what you are. I know what happened to you, and to your brother. But even my knowledge has… limits. And you Tim, well. You can help with that”

In his last few seconds of consciousness, Tim had just enough time to hope beyond all hopes that Elias just wanted an interview. The iron pipe that connected painfully with the back of his head put those thoughts to rest fairly quickly. As blackness covered his vision and his body slumped forward on the chair, he thought he could hear the click of a tape recorder shutting off, somewhere in the distance.

When Tim groggily came to, it took him a couple of seconds to work out where he was. It took a couple more seconds to realise why he was struggling to place himself. The room he was in not only seemed to be one he’d never set foot in before, but the lack of any kind of windows was depriving him of even the remotest chance of gaining any information on his situation. All he could make out was that the walls were lined with what looked suspiciously like… lights. There was a weird mixture of different lights - some just plain halogen strips, but others what looked weirdly like UV lighting, the kind Tim had mostly only seen in clubs or tanning salons. He was briefly confused by their presence until he noticed where their light was hitting his skin.

The faint stinging feeling he’d noticed when he’d first woken up and had promptly ignored in favour of exploring his surroundings seemed to be coming from patches of sunburnt skin. It was like he’d been sat out in the midday sun for just a little bit too long, not bad enough that it wouldn’t be fixed with some aloe vera and a cold bath, but just enough that it was a painful presence at the back of his mind. Nothing too bad at the moment, but definitely something he should move away from.

It wasn’t until he attempted to flinch away from the UV beams that Tim realised he was restrained. Heavy ropes were tying his wrists and ankles to the chair he was sat on, looped around multiple times and tied off with large and complicated looking notes. They weren’t quite tight enough to pinch, or cut off blood flow, had he even any blood to cut off anymore, but they certainly weren’t allowing him any room to move out of the light, to save his skin from the now blistering heat of the lights.

Although there were no visible speakers, noise crackled through into the room, a familiar voice that grated on Tim’s ears causing pain somehow even worse than the lights. 

“So, I see you’re awake”

Even disembodied, Elias somehow sounded even more smug than usual. It would have been infuriating if Tim didn’t have more pressing things to be pissed off about.

“What the fuck have you done to me?” he snarled, any hope of keeping up a cool facade completely forgotten in the face of overwhelming fear and terror. He strained against the ropes, less out of a desire to break free and more just out of a final, valiant attempt at something, anything that would give him even the illusion of control, something that would allow him to say he  _ tried.  _ Elias may have tied him up, may have kidnapped him and dragged him to god knows where, but he would not give that sicko the satisfaction of breaking him. 

The laughter that came from the speaker only served to fuel his anger. 

“I told you Tim,” Elias said, amusement dancing through his voice like sparks above a fire; light and airy, but with an undercurrent of danger that sizzled against Tim’s skin. “I have some questions about your… kind. You are going to help me answer them”

As the other man spoke, the lights around Tim seemed to brighten in intensity, the light growing as bulbs he hadn’t even noticed were switched on. His skin began to prickle all over, the burning moving from discomfort to outright pain. His eyes were watering, heightened senses screaming in agony at the sheer amount of light, blinding him without remorse. Even with them screwed as tightly shut as possible, Tim could still see the dancing patterns they left behind, and the soft orange glow that managed to penetrate even behind his eyelids, a constant reminder that there was no escape. 

Elias was still talking, because of course the bastard would monologue like a Bond villain as soon as he got the chance, but his words were getting harder to distinguish over the flood of sensation. Through the haze of pain and light, Tim could just about make out his boss’ parting words. 

“We’re testing your endurance, Mr Stoker. Let’s see how far we can stretch your limits, shall we?”

As it turns out, the limits Elias intended to test weren’t limited to just how much sunlight he could bear, or how much light it took to blind him outright. Time wasn’t exactly clear, without windows or light cycles, and with the agony stretching out the minutes like a rack. The only way he could track that any time was passing at all was by the blistering of his skin and the growing hunger in his stomach. It wasn’t long before it was as bad as it had been, back in those first few weeks before he’d worked out what was happening, what his body needed. The logical part of him knew it couldn’t have actually been that long - as much as his body had changed, Tim still got tired and needed sleep like anyone else, and judging solely by how often he slept, it could only have been a matter of days, not weeks. But as the hunger grew, logical reasoning grew harder and harder to come by, replaced instead by a primal fury, a vicious, clawing thirst for blood and violence and revenge. It felt like his personality was slipping away with every second spent in that room, his resolve chipped away piece by piece. It was almost a relief, in the end, to slip into the unknowing hunger. 

Whatever happened next felt like a blur. Looking back, Tim had no idea how he’d gotten out of the damned room, nor how he had found his way from wherever Elias had been holding him. The first clear moment he could recall was him standing over a man in a damp alleyway, blood covering his face and running in rivulets down his front. The man in question was lying limp on the dirty ground, his throat a mess of wounds. It was all Tim could do not to throw up, as images of Danny’s mutilated corpse superimposed themselves over the body before him. 

He staggered backwards, swiping the back of his hand across his face to try in vain to get rid of the blood he could feel lying thick on his face, reeking with that familiar metallic stench. As his back hit the opposite wall, he slid down, crumpling onto the floor of the alleyway with his head between his knees, breathing shallow and harsh even though there wasn’t any use for it. His horror and panic were so overwhelming he didn’t notice the woman approaching until he felt the hard pressure of something pressing into his forehead. Looking up revealed the cold glint of a pistol’s barrel, matched only by the same hardness in the eyes of the person holding it. 

“I’ve been watching you, you know.”

Her voice was surprisingly softer than Tim was expecting, the hard tone offset slightly by the Welsh lilt that coloured her words. He blinked up at her, unable to think of any kind of response over the overwhelming rush of emotions that were rendering him completely useless. Even the gun held to his head didn’t prompt much more than resignation, a deep seated feeling of “well, my life’s been a trainwreck up until now, this might as well be how it ends”. A different part of him was even thinking that maybe he deserved it, that he was just as bad as the thing that had killed Danny, and if he couldn’t kill that fucking clown then at least this woman could kill him. At least there’d be one fewer monster in this world.

Some of what he was thinking must have shown on his face. It was the only explanation for the flinch that passed across his attacker’s expression, the tiny crack in her perfectly neutral expression. When she spoke again, her words were less harsh than before. There was even a hint of what could have been pity in her tone.

“You’ve never killed before, have you?”

Tim shook his head, silently. The woman sighed. 

“How long have you been… well, y’know”

Getting the words out was a struggle. Even beyond the mental block, Tim’s throat felt rough and sore, as if he’d been screaming non-stop. It was only later that the thought occurred to him that that may very well have been the case. As it was, there were a few moments of tense, awkward silence before Tim managed to choke out “Nearly... a year. August.”

Although the woman’s expression remains just as calm and controlled as ever, she raised an eyebrow in what could generously be called ‘surprise’. Evidently Tim’s response had impressed her somewhat, even if she was trying her hardest to hide it. She lowered her gun, finger still on the trigger but pointed away now, and held out a hand. Tim just stared at it for a second before reaching out to take it, pulling himself up to stand on shaky feet. Now that he was standing, he could tell he was a couple of inches taller than the woman, but even standing over her he still felt like he was cringing under her gaze. 

“Are you not going to kill me?” he rasped, not entirely sure what he wanted the answer to be. The woman hesitated, before holstering her pistol altogether.

She shrugged. “Usually I would take any opportunity to kill a monster.”

Tim couldn’t help but flinch at her words, even with the proof staring up at him with a cold, dead gaze and a mutilated throat. The woman stared for a second before continuing. 

“Just this once though… I’m going to let you go. I’ve… I’ve never seen a vampire look like that after they kill, like they regret it more than anything else. Just know that if I see you like this again, I will not hesitate.”

She turned and stalked away, long coat flapping slightly as she moved. Tim could do nothing but stare after the figure as it disappeared into the distance, his body still shaking with the shock. He stood there, still covered in blood, still with that corpse cooling by his feet, still reeling from everything he had been through, feeling more exhausted than he had ever felt before in his life. 

It was odd how his life seemed to return to normal after that day. Aside from a few polite comments at work about how nice it was to see him back, and a belated Get Well Soon card delivered by a red-faced Martin, no one really commented on his week long, completely unplanned absence. The closest he got to the reaction he was expecting was a series of very odd looks from the tall goth man who kept hanging round the archives, and even he disappeared before too long. 

He wasn’t complaining. Tim’s tactic when it came to things like this was take one of two routes - get angry now, or get angry later. There was no use confronting Elias over this. Something told him the elderly man was a lot stronger than he looked, and getting back up required telling someone else what happened - after the run in with the woman in the alley, Tim was incredibly hesitant to do that anytime soon. So he bit his tongue and gritted his teeth, keeping his head down as he slogged through statement after statement, still searching for anything that was linked to the clown, to things that killed his brother and ruined his life and brought him to this godforsaken Institute.

The promotion to archival assistant came just a year later. Tim took it.


End file.
